


Of Sleepless Nights, Unhelpful Minds and the Strange Behaviour of Older Brothers

by broken_ankle



Series: Repressing Feelings, Hiding Things. You Know, the Family Business [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Difficulties Falling Asleep, Difficulties Focusing, Executive Dysfunction, Gen, Intrusive Thoughts, Minor Castiel/Dean Winchester, POV Second Person, not for anything more malicious than a mind wired that way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:09:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27198985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broken_ankle/pseuds/broken_ankle
Summary: Sam's mind has never been the most useful thing, but he's used to the ebb and flow of its functioning. Not being able to fall asleep, losing time, hyperfixating on a meaningless particular, being incapable of focusing on anything when not hunting, those are just things he's been coping with for his whole life. When Dean begins behaving strangely, that's just something to add to the list while preferably finding out why, and where is Castiel going at night, anyway?
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Repressing Feelings, Hiding Things. You Know, the Family Business [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1943218
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	Of Sleepless Nights, Unhelpful Minds and the Strange Behaviour of Older Brothers

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, this grew (in size too) to become completely different from what I'd envisioned. Oh well, I'm just happy I managed to write from Sam's POV (I just had to project, who would've thought? Not like that's, like, at least 85% of my writing). This takes part between one and two months after Dean and Cas' talk under the stars, so between three and four months after the incubus hunt.
> 
> Other than the tags, warnings for assumptions based on past behaviour, a coming out conversation not started as one, loss of sense of time. Reader discretion is advised.
> 
> Please, please tell me if there's something I've not tagged or if there's something offensive for someone. I'll provvide betterment. Please, tell me also if you've liked this. Feedback is nice.

There’s something wrong with your brother, you know it. If just Dean would come out and say what it is, but of course it doesn’t work that way. When has it ever worked that way, for both of you? You talk a good deal about communicating, but you too have been less than forthcoming in the last five years, and even before—

You still don’t like thinking about before. It still hurts, thinking about before.

Back to your brother, because thinking about your brother may carry a pain equal if not greater than thinking about before, but at least he’s still alive. Or alive again, you’re not really sure about terminology here.

The thing is, you know that Dean is more settled in himself than you’ve seen since he came back from Hell, possibly even before, but at the same time he’s…skittish. Not skittish, exactly, maybe more like jumpy. He’s settled into his own skin more, he smiles more, but the next moment he’ll avoid any and all contact–even if you were just trying to avoid touching him, too, but damn it, that room was tiny–and he’ll be closed off and snappish.

You don’t know what to think, and Castiel’s shifty expression when you asked him if he knew anything about it wasn’t reassuring at all, but you tried to talk to Dean and got a hurried answer and him going out to a bar.

You have no idea what to do, and you have no idea what even is happening, if something is happening at all and your mind isn’t by now completely set in looking for the next tragedy, which Dean’s behaviour isn’t, that’s just a bit odder than normal, but you can’t help but think back to—well, you can’t help but think back, and maybe Dean’s shifty behaviour is an indicator of something he’s keeping from you, maybe something big, something serious.

But maybe it’s nothing, he’d tell you if he were hiding another apocalypse—wouldn’t he?

He definitely would.

No, he wouldn’t.

Yes, he would. He would tell you.

Wouldn’t he?

* * *

Dean disappears almost every night—probably to a bar but you’ve never really followed up because you don’t know what to hope for, you don’t even know if you should hope for your brother to disappear to a bar and then to someone’s bed for the night every night, but you can’t help your worry every time you watch the door close behind him.

Neither of you is healthy, you know that–maybe physically, at least, but that’s not even just your merit, now, with an angel hanging out almost always, and that’s still awesome in the original meaning of the word, the way Castiel spends time with Dean and you more and more–but you like to think that you’re both getting better at it, because if you’re not thinking that you’ll think that you’ll probably never get better, and that’s something you don’t want to revisit. Ever, possibly, but you know in the bottom of your mind that you’re not that lucky.

It’s still early, almost ten, and you try not to think about the last hour you spent idly scrolling through casual Wikipedia pages without having to strength to stop, but now you have, so you turn on your laptop. Castiel has to have forgotten once again to close the tab he was using, because you find the by-now familiar AVEN homepage greeting you, and you can’t help a small smile from curving your lips. You check the date, note that it’s still May—of course it’s still May, your birthday was just two weeks ago and Dean even got you a cake because he wanted to show Castiel what a human birthday looked like, but of course he had ignored his own for the demonstration. You should ask Castiel if he wants to have a birthday, date his for the choosing, just so you have another day you can force Dean to enjoy.

By the time you re-emerge from your half-hearted fantasies of throwing an Angel of the Lord a birthday party–who are you kidding, they were full-hearted and amusing–it’s past eleven, and you frown. It’s been a while since you lost time this easily, but you still remember before–and the precious, precious days of respite in the last five years–well enough to stop your impulse to look for a hex bag in the room. This is normal, losing time like this is normal, it’s nothing to worry about. People, normal people do that all the time.

By the time you’re under the scratchy covers of yet another too-short motel bed with the lights out, Dean’s still not come back.

You just hope this isn’t the time you have to look for him in the morning.

* * *

You can’t believe how long it took for you to connect the dots–which admittedly may be not part of the same picture anyway–but only now, after a month of Dean’s near-nightly trips to the nearest bar, you realize that you’ve never seen Castiel on the same nights. And yes, you admit, if only to yourself, that that’s not really a smoking gun, but your gut says it is, and you’re slowly coming back to speaking terms with your gut, but your mind’s on board too—not that your mind’s particularly reputable, either, but you certainly won’t rely on your heart any time soon. Who are you kidding, first time Dean’s in danger, your heart’s in control.

Anyway, back to Castiel. You think he’s not going back to Heaven–he told you as much, and you have no reason to think that he would be lying–so where does he go? It’s possible he follows Dean, you suppose, but you’re pretty sure you know what your brother’s doing on those nights, and Castiel said sex distresses him, but he never said if it happens only when he is involved in the first person. You don’t think Castiel still has developed–if he ever will–the typical male American aversion to talking about sex as something other than a proof of masculine prowess—whatever that means. You’re still toying with the idea of not being exactly—

But still, Castiel.

Actually, you don’t even know for sure that he’s not in the room with you when you don’t know where he is. He is an angel, after all, and even if he has a human body he can still hide himself from human sight.

After another hour of circular thoughts, you give up. You’ll never come to a conclusion on where Castiel is when you can’t see him on your own, and you don’t want to track his phone just to resolve your doubts.

He never remembers to charge it anyway.

* * *

You’re not really sure if what you think you saw yesterday night when you got up for a glass of water was a dream or reality. Doesn’t make much difference for the good it’d do you asking, anyway. Dean would never admit to staring up at the stars with some kind of wistful expression.

* * *

You can take your brother being skittish and cagey, you can, but you draw a line at a fumbling Angel of the Lord. It’s not even that he fumbled, it’s just that he’s acting more cagey than he’s done in a long time, and it’s all due to you asking him where he goes at night.

But you’re still not sure he’s even disappearing to follow Dean, so your mind forces you to let it go again.

Sometimes you just want to go with your gut, but your mind’s usually stronger. And indecisive.

* * *

You know you can focus on things, you’d have died a lot more times if you couldn’t, but why, why, why can’t you just focus when you’re not hunting something?

Why can you focus only when someone else’s life is at stake?

Well, technically people’s lives are always at stake, so you should always be focused, but your mind laughs at rationality and continues keeping you staring at the water-stained ceiling, clamouring inside to move, to do something, look for another case, play a solitaire, anything, but outside you’re still, your eyes on a particularly yellowish spot of almost-certainly mildew. You hate your mind, but sometimes you think that it’s your only redeeming quality, not that it’s much of one anyway.

You think you finally get yourself on your side after five minutes, but a glance at the clock on the nightstand confirms that it’s been much longer. Staring at the empty bed on the other side of the room isn’t much better–and why are you even paying for the second bed if it never gets used as anything other than a deposit anyway?–so you close your eyes and hope that sleep catch you soon, but you’ve never been able to shut down your mind before, so why would it happen now?

You don’t want to know how much time has passed since you’ve tried to go to sleep when the door opens. You breathe steady, deep breaths as your hand slips under your pillow to the knife you keep there, but there’s no need for that.

A noise that is not even that loud earns itself a quiet shush in your brother’s voice, so you take your hand from under your head—careful, careful, he mustn’t know you have trouble falling asleep, you’ve fooled him well enough in all these years.

“Apologies,” Castiel whispers back, and, uh, maybe your gut was right for once.

Or just for tonight.

“We need to be quiet. Sammy’s sleeping,” Dean says, and you’re grateful for Castiel not pointing the lie out, because you’re sure than he must know you’re awake, he’s an angel, he can probably read your brainwaves.

That would be an interesting thing to ask him, but you know that by tomorrow you’ll have forgotten, nevermind that your mind’s still functioning at full capacity.

You hear the sounds of a person undressing, and then the sheets rustling as Dean presumably parts them to slip into the bed.

And then there are the sounds of another person undressing, and suddenly you’re even more awake than before–damn it, you were finally falling asleep!–because if there’s nobody else–and you don’t think there is, Dean wouldn’t be so careless–that means that Castiel is the one undressing. You risk a glance, but nothing scarring is going on and hopefully won’t go on with you in the room.

You watch with a feeling of cool detachment and almost scientific curiosity as an Angel of the Lord carefully folds his jacket–Jimmy’s jacket? Is it Castiel’s now, if Jimmy’s dead?–and puts it carefully onto the same chair where he already positioned his coat and, under, shoes and socks. Your interest peaks when said Angel of the Lord gets into the same bed as your brother without Dean complaining–you have half a mind of checking for hex bags or anything like that, but you know that tomorrow morning you won’t remember to do it–and spooning said brother with nothing more than a contented sigh as answer.

You scrunch your eyes shut when Castiel fractionally turns his head in your direction, but you know that you’ve been made, if you weren’t before. He doesn’t say anything though, and for that you’re grateful, because you don’t think Dean would be alright with you knowing, and certainly not with you knowing like this.

“You can fly off before Sam wakes up, right?” you hear your brother ask in the dark.

You don’t catch Castiel’s rumbling answer, but that’s not what has something coil in the pit of your stomach.

Why doesn’t Dean want you to know? Does he think that you, what, that you’d react badly to him searching comfort from someone? Granted, there’s a part of you that’s asking why you’re not enough, why can’t he come to you for comfort, but that’s the part of before-before, possibly before-before-before, and it’s easy to ignore after all this time.

If Dean finds comfort in Castiel, who are you to judge him?

You don’t know what time it is by the time Dean’s sleeping, and you don’t want to know.

It’s late, and that’s enough.

You turn on your other side to propitiate sleep, but of course that doesn’t help. Your life would be that much more simple if it did.

* * *

Surprisingly, you remember enough about the night to ask Castiel about the brainwaves thing.

He can read them, by the way, because it’s just electromagnetic waves, and he’s kind of a wave himself. You luckily stop yourself from asking if that makes him kind of a cousin to all the brains on Earth. You don’t need someone else thinking you’ve got some screws loose.

The thing is, you remember your brother letting out a content sigh upon being spooned by an Angel of the Lord, but you have no idea how to bring it up—if you could even bring it up in the first place. It’s not your business whom your brother goes to bed with, in any way shape or form that happens. It’s not.

But you still want to talk about it with someone.

Too bad the only person you could talk with is the one who doesn’t want you to know about it.

* * *

Sometimes your life is depressing.

Well, most times your life is depressing, compared to the average person’s life, but that’s not a fair comparison, is it? Your life’s not average in any way, and you’ve by now developed ways of coping with it as everyone else has probably developed ways to cope with theirs. Everyone’s used to their life, even when and if they’re striving to make it better, and your life is just one of the millions available to a human being.

You’re nothing special, your life is nothing special, and you should really be able to focus on important things and not only on the tree outside the window, but that won’t happen in the next half hour minimum, so you just resign yourself to think about the last book you read cover to cover obsessively until your mind kindly lets you break free of the loop.

* * *

You’re slowly putting pieces together, but you’re still not sure they belong to the same jigsaw puzzle, so you’re hesitant to declare the picture clearer than a week ago because, yes, Dean is antsier and more snappish than he’s been in a couple of months and, yes, Castiel has been gone for the whole week–probably to Heaven, he did say something about one of his siblings not being as dead as they should’ve been–but you’re in the middle of a case that’s just gone suddenly cold after ten years of clockwork-like activity, so you aren’t really sure if Castiel’s absence is really the cause of your brother’s foul mood. And sure, Castiel is your friend too, and you don’t want more people to disappear either, but you have no idea what’s gotten into Dean, and anyway you’re not your brother, so that’s a moot point.

It’s not like you could ask and really expect an answer, is it? It should be, but it’s not.

* * *

What if the reason Dean is so snappish when Castiel isn’t here is because—

No.

Don’t go there.

He’s an angel, he wouldn’t do that.

More than that, he’s Castiel.

Besides, Michael’s never been imprisoned anywhere.

* * *

When Castiel comes back after another week saying that one of his favourite brothers wasn’t as dead as he’d led the whole Host to believe, you kind of want to ask him about a lot of things concerning angels, starting with whether it’s true or not that he has six wings, but you can see that Dean’s almost vibrating out of his skin to talk with Castiel alone, so you say that you’re going to the library to try to figure this out for the umpteenth time and leave.

You don’t go to the library, because today is one of those days when focus is completely out of your reach, and you feel guilty, of course you do, but you wouldn’t be able to find anything useful if Dean’s life depended on it, so you don’t even try, and that’s an even worse feeling of failure.

Sometimes you don’t really believe you’re as young as you are, sometimes you feel as though you too have spent years somewhere else, but that’s not really nice, is it, because he did it for you and you should be grateful, not think paragons you have no business thinking, because you may have been woken up by his nightmares, but you have no idea how it really is down there. You don’t really know what he’s been through for you.

You aimlessly wander through town, looking at nothing and looking for nothing. You get bored after ten minutes, but you want to leave your brother to say whatever it is he wants to say to Castiel, so you keep strolling up and down the streets, looking at the time every five minutes feeling like an hour has passed.

Of course time is sluggish when you need it to move fast.

* * *

You don’t get scarred this time either, A furtive glance from the window reveals that they are–much as Dean would probably hate the term–cuddling, so you just open the door and revel in the sight of your brother jumping away from a confused Angel of the Lord as if burnt.

“What the hell, Sam?” Dean yells, and you just arch a brow.

“I need to use the bathroom,” you say and proceed to do just that.

When you come out after only a couple of minutes more than necessary–you could hear low voices talking in the room, so you figured you’d give them a bit of time–Dean’s sitting on a chair at the table and Castiel’s still on the bed they both occupied when you came back, only now he’s sitting too.

It feels like two parents ready to scold their son for coming home past his curfew, or possibly the single dad scolding his two sons, you’re not really sure who’s supposed to do the scolding here.

It’s not you, almost certainly. You have nothing to scold either your brother or Castiel for.

“Listen, Sammy,” Dean begins carefully, face twisted into some sort of careful expression that’s not really at home there and is probably asking itself what’s it doing on your brother’s face. “This is not what it looks like.”

You can’t keep yourself from raising a brow at that. “Are you going to deny that you and Cas were cuddling?”

“That was not cuddling!” comes the predictable answer. “It was—uh—”

As much fun as seeing Dean flounder for an explanation that’d keep his masculinity–whatever that means and, seriously, humans need touch. When has it become synonym for something it’s absolutely not?–intact is, you’d like to expedite things and maybe try to get to bed early for once, so you maybe could sleep more than six hours tonight and wake up tomorrow feeling a bit more alive than you normally do at seven in the morning.

“Whatever it was, it’s between you and Cas. If you don’t want to tell me, that’s alright.” Not really, but the part of you from before-before-before should be dead, and it’s easy to ignore regardless. Dean is entitled to his secrets, as long as he’s not keeping something apocalyptic from you. This shouldn’t be, but then again—

Stop, it’s Castiel. Just stop.

“So you’re not—“ Dean’s eyes stay on you while his head lowers, giving his face a sort of bashfulness you didn’t think you’d ever see again if not faked, “—mad?”

“What for?” you ask, because Dean’s not making any sense. Why would you be mad? Because he’s cuddling someone? Good for him, really.

“Because me and Cas are…” he trails off, clearly willing you to fill in the blanks, but you won’t, not if the first, instinctual response is a romantic relationship, because those are tricky, and you don’t want to assume regardless.

The silence–and silent staring contest, but that’s not here nor there–gets interrupted when Castiel gets bored or annoyed or a host of other things with it.

“Your brother and I are in a relationship,” he says, as matter-of-fact as anything.

You look back at Dean, and he’s not meeting your eyes. So it was this he thought you’d get mad about, but it’s not…

“I’m happy for you,” you say, really meaning it because, well, after everything, Dean deserves happiness and good things, and Castiel is both for him.

Your brother looks at you out of the corner of his eye, his head still lowered and still wringing his hands on his lap. “You are?” he says, and you hate it, hate the way his voice goes low and careful and brittle, and you don’t know how to do this, you don’t know how to comfort him, but you figure a reassuring smile is a good way to start.

“Of course I am, Dean.”

“Even if it means that I’m…” And here his voice gets even lower, even more brittle, and you hate it, you hate it, you hate it, you hate it. “Bisexual?” he whispers, nearly inaudible.

“That’s not a bad thing to be,” you try, because you’re flying blind here, you didn’t think you’d find yourself in the midst of your brother’s coming out today, you just thought—

It doesn’t matter anymore what you thought. This is the hand you’ve been dealt, and you’ll be damned if you ruin it.

Dean hiccups, but that’s not a hiccup, you can see the tears he’s fighting, and then he looks at you, really looks at you, and he repeats. “Sammy, I’m—bi.” He still hesitates, but you can’t really fault him, not with the life he’s lead, not with the way he’s grown up.

You smile again. “Hey, you’re still my big brother, bi or not.” He smiles too, a careful and small and fragile smile.

“Do you want a hug?” you ask, and you see his hesitation, but in the end he nods, slowly and carefully and hesitatingly, and this is not the moment to mourn his childhood, so you just hug your brother and don’t mention his tears losing themselves in your shirt.

Sometimes crying is the healthy thing to do.

* * *

Life doesn’t change after that day in the town with the case gone cold.

You leave after another week, because not even Castiel can say what it was that was making the people disappear, and he can’t find traces of anything amiss.

Neither you nor Dean is happy about packing up and changing case–and you suspect Castiel isn’t either–but there are other things to hunt out there, and you’ve been here long enough.

Dean doesn’t disappear every evening anymore, now that he and Castiel can just stay on his bed to do what they were in the Impala, which is just cuddling. You don’t tease him for it, because your brother’s still skittish on the subject, still sensitive whenever his bisexuality comes up in any way, even tangentially, but that’s alright. Accepting yourself isn’t immediate. You should know, you’ve greatly struggled with that in the past.

You are still struggling with sleep and your mind and your non-existent focus, and you’ve still not told Dean—you’ll probably never tell Dean, if you know yourself. Castiel sometimes looks at you as if he knew, but he doesn’t say anything, so you keep pretending you’re fine, you keep pretending that your mind hasn’t been ruining your life while being your redeeming quality. You’ve been coping with it for your whole life, you can keep doing it.

Most days are okay, though. Most days you’re just one third of a family saving people and hunting things, the guy in the passenger seat of a black vintage car going from backwater town to backwater town with his brother driving and an Angel of the Lord in the backseat.

Most days, what you are is not a bad thing to be.

**Author's Note:**

> There will probably be something else in this series, seen as I've discovered the joys of projecting on two and a half thirds of Team Free Will 1.0.


End file.
